


Modern Origami

by leslielol



Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: Getting Together, Injury, M/M, Minor Violence, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-09
Updated: 2018-02-09
Packaged: 2019-03-16 01:08:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13625358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leslielol/pseuds/leslielol
Summary: Dramatics --> Violence --> Heartfelt concern --> Overthought hijinks --> Gettin' that D





	Modern Origami

**Author's Note:**

> I posted on my tumblr the other night after the shitshow to end all shitshows, and while I am still not sure where I stand continuing with/abandoning my series, I went into my drafts folder and found this thing from way, way back. Very nearly done already, I spent about two hours on it today--longer than anyone seemed to work on the plot of The Undiscovered Country--and here’s the end result.
> 
> I adore Barba. I’m sorry his character was at the mercy of unmindful writers. I don’t think he would have pulled the plug on a stranger’s fleshy lump, and I think it speaks to SVU’s absurdity that I have to write that sentence. 
> 
> Here’s some shit from back when the show lent itself to happier flights of fancy.
> 
> Seasons 18 and 19 didn't happen, you dig?

In an hour’s time, when he’s sat in an uncomfortable plastic chair and digging dried blood out from under his fingernails, Carisi will recall the events like folded paper. 

One corner of the courtroom collapsed, then the other, and then they met in a terrible cross section of bodies, blood, and intent. 

At its center was Barba. 

And then there was Carisi, careening across the courtroom floor to meet him there. 

-

First, there’s Barba.

It’s practically a victory lap, the way he meanders back to his desk after a damning show of force during his cross. The defendant has been lying from the second they’d escorted him into the interrogation room--Carisi could attest to that, and _had,_ three days earlier. Barba was under no illusions that being sat on a stand and sworn under oath would produce different results, so he’d gone on the offensive, drawing Ronald Gardner out with a quick succession of questioning, and then laying his performance before him in a gutting review. 

The man sits and seethes for a time. The judge twice tells him to step down, and when he finally does he’s no less red-faced or angry. His eyes track Barba all the while. 

Barba, who wears a three-piece-suit, a mix of vertical and horizontal stripes from his throat down to his feet, and a smile. 

As sure as Carisi can see it from where he sits in the gallery, Barba can sense the unease among the jurors at Gardner’s stewing. Barba chooses to let them have the moment to themselves, to come away thinking he hadn’t guided them to it. Later, he thinks, they’ll murmur to one another about what they saw, like so long as the prosecutor doesn’t point to it, the behavior remains a secret playing out in open court. 

It’s his first mistake: not looking up. 

He doesn’t react until Gardner is right ahead of his desk, and even then, the slight upturn of his head and relaxing of his shoulders isn’t much of a reaction to clear and present intimidation. 

“Something more you’d like to say, Mr. Gardner?” 

Gardner’s response is to Barba’s cool tone and unrattled nature, if not his question. He grabs the glass water decanter from where it rests on the right end of the desk--where Carisi once sat as Barba’s long drawn shadow--and brings it down hard over the ADA.

Barba is quick enough to raise an arm to block his head, as well as start to stand. It is, from Carisi’s view, the first step towards ensuring a fair fight. 

There’s the shattering of glass, shouting from the jury, the judge’s gavel cracking down--at once too much happening and too little response. Carisi, having stood and clamored over others in the gallery, hurdles over the partition and sees that the response is _far_ from lacking. 

He gets it fast in his head that Barba will throw a punch if he gets the chance, and somehow that’s a fear on par with what Gardner will do, regardless. 

The broken neck of the decanter is still raised in Gardner’s hand, though much of the glass is gone, but not so far. It’s lodged in Barba’s arm, and Carisi catches sight of it--a strange, glittering accessory--the second before he puts his shoulder into Gardner’s chest, driving him away from Barba and onto the ground. They land one on top of the other, with Carisi scrambling fast to secure Gardner’s wrists until other hands rush to join his efforts. Gardner heaves against every effort to contain him, an effort that is itself an extension of his attack on Barba. The bailiff and court security officers arrive in numbers enough to excuse Carisi, who loses his footing in a spray of blood, and nearly loses his lunch for the thought of where it came from. 

He leverages himself up with an arm on the corner of Barba’s desk, over which papers and an orderly arrangement of evidence have scattered. Barba is stood behind the desk, staring at the rabble on the floor ahead of him. 

Carisi cuts deliberately into his view. 

“Counselor, are you okay?” Carisi feels like he has to shout over the blood pounding between his ears. “Barba?”

Finally, Barba seems to see Carisi for the disruption he is. He blinks once, then opens his mouth and dumbly asks the first thing that crosses his mind: “How did you get over here so fast?”

“Are you okay?”

Beyond them, Gardner is wrestled into custody under orders from the judge and a notably silent Buchanan. 

Carisi rounds the desk to join Barba, who looks a little stunned. His hair is wet, though that is more the fault of the water in the decanter than any substantial head wound. There are maybe a dozen or so small cuts to the side of his face, where the spray of glass caught him. His right arm, which he holds awkwardly with his left, seems to radiate heat. 

Barba makes a small noise of offense, then a pronounced, _“Ugh.”_

He’s staring down at at arm of his suit, where the fabric is split and opened to receive a great shard of glass protruding from it. It’s curved, wider along its base and sharp at the top, almost like a ship’s sail. It’s as clear and pristine as glittering ocean waters. 

He considers at it a moment, confused. It isn’t until blood starts to dribble--then stream--out of his white shirt cuff that Barba finds cause for alarm.

He and Carisi have the same idea: Barba shrugs his uninjured arm out of his jacket and Carisi grabs the slack of it, thinking they can make quick work of a tourniquet without removing the shard of glass. He guides Barba’s arm upward, then wraps the extra length of the jacket sleeve snugly along the crook of Barba’s elbow. However rushed, it’s a fine bit of craftsmanship. 

Except, Barba’s arm isn’t the only point of contact. 

“Oh shit,” Carisi says, and for a moment Barba doesn’t understand him. Carisi’s staring somewhere below his eyeline, and still all sense escapes him until a warmth and heaviness against his chest draws his attention, and Barba is forced to look down his shirtfront, searching for answers. 

His white dress shirt is blooming with red. In size, shape, and coloring, it’s almost as if someone has pinned a flower there, a happy carnation. It’s very nearly pretty. 

“Oh,” Barba says, surprised.

He brings his free hand to his throat, fingertips skimming the red, and tugs the knot of his dusty pink tie low. He realizes the tie itself is torn, and fraying. He starts unbuttoning his shirt, just enough to fit a searching hand through what he fears is an opening to certain hell. 

He smiles stupidly; it’s nothing, only a long, superficial cut born of his efforts to deflect the strike. What should have cracked over his head and carried across his throat was largely lost to his arm, and the remaining effort to bear the act further were mitigated. The bloodstain--and the shirt it takes with it--is a bigger loss than whatever few scrapes his chest can claim. 

He likewise feels Carisi’s relief: a long-held breath expelled as he, too, sees torn fabric and shredded flesh, but nothing speared or punctured. 

Barba’s expression is soon reclaimed with a grimace. 

Carisi reads it and asks, “What hurts?”

That the answer is not an immediate, _The Louvre’s worth of glass in my arm, **dipshit**_ has Carisi considering it a win.

“My wrist.”

Carisi looks down and sees his firm grip is the culprit. He sees, too, that his hand is red with Barba’s blood. He wears it like an awful glove, for how complete the effort is to coat from his knuckles to his fingertips, and drip its excess miserably onto the floor. 

Carisi forces himself to see beyond the grotesque and calculate the means by which blood is surely _gushing_ forth from the wound on Barba’s forearm, soaking through both Barba’s shirt _and_ his suit jacket well before it finds this escape route.

“Don’t,” Carisi says, a half-made reminder for them both, because as much as Barba wants to shed his jacket completely and peel off his shirt and see the carnage for himself, it’s a fool’s errand. Morbid curiosity isn’t cause enough for sustained blood loss, and there’s more than enough to be satisfied with.

It pools at their feet, an awful little pond on linoleum tile. Barba watches its territory expand and feels a terrifying lack of agency. He’s stuck like stone in his place, much the same as he had behind the table, sat in his chair, unwittingly poised for the attack. 

Carisi raises Barba’s arm by the wrist again, elevating it just enough to hopefully stay the bleeding. He doesn’t say this is what he’s going; his mouth has gone dry, and he can’t help but see the irony in the shattered water decanter. He takes a breath and wills himself not to lose sight of what to do. 

He says something over his shoulder-- _We waiting on a bus?_ \--and one of the officers who’d laid himself flat over Gardner and wrangled the man into cuffs answers in the affirmative: _EMTs are enroute._

Carisi squares his attention back on Barba and (Barba notices with some disapproval) doesn’t let up on his grip. In fact, another hand has joined the effort, and Carisi is holding Barba’s arm at the elbow and the wrist. Barba imagines only the threat, as if Carisi were of a mind to break the limb over his knee. 

Barba tugs, wanting freedom. He thinks he can get it, too, if his blood is slick enough to grease its passing.

But Carisi restrains him, and looks annoyed for his trouble. 

“Alright, Counselor, you good to walk outta here?”

He figures they can meet the EMTs on the steps or the street, and at least cut a few seconds off their departure to a hospital. 

“Of course,” Barba answers stiffly. Even in such a state--shirt torn and opened, bleeding from a substantial wound--he demands order and compliance. His own, if that’s all he can manage. His hand opens in search of something it’s missing. “My--”

Carisi abandons one hand to the cause of snatching Barba’s briefcase off the floor, where it had been knocked over and skid a couple feet in the scuffle. He drags it a ways with his foot first, and Barba has the presence of mind to look more offended by that than the glass sticking out of his arm.

Carisi all but waves the thing in Barba’s face, proclaiming, “Here, look, I’ve got it.” 

“Okay, but--” Barba turns, walks right out of Carisi’s long-armed reach in a fine bit of footwork. That he can evade a helping hand easier than a blunt fist does not strike him as anything more than poor luck, though he doesn’t miss the sharp look Carisi sends his way.

His own arm feels overly heavy without Carisi’s effort to keep it upright, and it drops into a state of freefall before Barba can think to hold it steady. The sleeves of his shirt and suit jacket, he notices, are sodden wet with his own blood. He keeps his chin up--and the grimace off his face--when he says: “Your honour, I need to request a brief recess.” 

To her credit, Judge Osborne looks mortified. 

_“Granted,_ Mr. Barba.” 

Barba turns again, and sways. Carisi is there immediately with a sure grip and his beanpole frame. Both are pressed against him, and for every step Barba takes to leave the courtroom, he feels assured in the journey. 

_“Hey,”_ Carisi says, a surprisingly cool admonishment Barba can only feel is earned by his suddenly weak and labored breathing. He feels a spell of nausea hit him as the smell of his own blood suddenly arrives, a burst of perfume below his nose and eyes. He bites his tongue to ground himself in another, more furtive taste of pain. Here, he can tell where he lays his tongue between his teeth, how much is held in contempt, how easily he can relent. There’s no mystery, no depth he can’t test. 

EMTs meet them at the door. Barba realizes it’s only taken them a minute or so, and the sluggishness of the ordeal is wholly wrapped up inside his own mind. Reality and time did not conform to his notions that this was taking _forever._

As the hands and attentions of the EMTs swarm him, Barba feels Carisi’s grip slip away, but reappear swiftly as a hand on his back. A light touch, it’s only meant to carry Barba through to the awaiting ambulance. 

-

Carisi feels strange pacing the third floor waiting room, his cell phone in one hand, Barba’s handsome briefcase clutched in the other.

He’s cleaned himself up, but there’s still plenty of Barba’s blood spotting his jacket, staining his hands warm if no longer red. There’s a real, permissive heat he can’t seem to appease with cold water and coarse paper towels. It’s terrible, but that doesn’t mean the coiling feeling in his stomach doesn’t cast out a wretched arm towards excitement, too. 

It’s all very _Patrick Bateman_ of him.

“He’s fine, Lieutenant.” 

Carisi doesn’t know yet if the first words out of his mouth are a lie or not, but he’s thankful Benson is only getting an earful, and can’t judge the pinched expression on his face.

He looks around the hallway, his body twisting with nervous energy so ferocious that his head only feels along for the ride. There are paper hearts adorning the walls, strung low for children to enjoy. Carisi doesn’t linger on the realization that this isn’t the children’s ward, but a space just beyond the ER. The red and pink decorations look like messy splotches the farther he looks, losing their shape to those burned in Carisi’s mind.

“There was, ah, a lotta blood. Gardner got him good in the arm, but I didn’t see bone or nothing…” He catches the eye of a nurse who seems to be looking for someone, decides it’s him, and is fast losing her patience for being made to wait. Carisi begs off his Lieutenant’s orders with a hasty, “Yeah, yes, of course.”

Carisi sticks out a hand to shake hers well before he’s even ended the call with Benson. The nurse, a woman who’s never known a man with impenetrable charm she didn’t run roughshod through, does not meet it.

It’s flu season, after all.

“You can see your friend, now.”

Carisi has the strangest impulse to question her--why make that assumption? He supposes his nervous pacing is answer enough, or else their matching bloodied attire culminates into a kind of visual cue, Carisi thinks, like star-crossed lovers circling one another in films, touched only by striped socks or paisley curtains noticed on a second viewing. 

All the same, when she leads him to a room and he passes her to enter, he makes certain the badge at his hip is on display, so that there’s something else said about his being here. A crime had taken place, and as sure as there was a victim being tended to, there was someone seeking justice on his behalf. It’s so simple an argument that Carisi bites his lip to keep from saying it aloud. 

The nurse has already turned a corner down the corridor, taking every assumption with her.

There’s not a whiff of Carisi’s purported authority when he drums gently on the door frame--it’s already open--much less the uncertain expression hanging over his face when he pokes his head in. He’s seen the effect of the damage; what worries him now is how Barba looks for having left all that blood on the courtroom floor. 

He’s sat on the corner of a paper-lined table, the kind that--however recently purchased from a pharmaceutical company--groan under the slightest touch, and once they are relieved, wheeze as if death has come for them. He’s about as well-dressed as he was, last Carisi had a hand in the display. His slacks are still sharply pressed, his socks and shoes a fine punctuation of pink and chestnut brown, respectively. They jutt ferociously into a world of taupe and white, and look healthier for it, especially considering the rest of Barba.

He is in a blue-and-white hospital gown, the loose hem of which lays awkwardly over his lap, so thin that even the pinstripe on his slacks shows through. Altogether, it does little to counter his pale outlook. His arms are bare, with one exception: the wound crowding Barba’s arm is colonizing space under a heavy spread of gauze. It’s more or less a sleeve, and Carisi comes to better appreciate the harm, much in the vein of, _it’s not the crime, it’s the cover-up._

The exposure of his throat is cut off by still more gauze, a lighter sheet taped at an angle and pinching at chest hair. Barba’s picking at it, and doesn’t look up right away.

Carisi speaks to give himself an excuse to keep staring.

“Hey, what’s the damage?”

“Minimal,” Barba says, but the strain in his voice suggests otherwise. He raises his arm, hand still in the fist he’d made while the wound was tended to. It’s a weak display. “Twelve stitches. And about two grand.” 

Carisi steps fully into the room at that, like he means to defend Barba now from the concept of capitalism.

“Whoa, hey, they can’t charge you for the ambulance!”

“I was talking about the suit,” Barba sniffs, then drags his gaze down the mottled red on Carisi’s sleeve and suit front, and revises: “Twenty-one hundred. Yours is ruined, too.”

“Highballing it,” Carisi jokes, a smile spilling over his features with a brightness to rival the antiseptic white of the tiny room. It’s private, at least. Barba’s not thrown in with the rest of those City dwellers who befell some injury at ten in the morning on a Tuesday. “Good to see you still have your wits about you, Counselor.” 

Barba scratches uncomfortably at the skin around the gauze taped to his forearm. It’s bunched around the crook of his elbow and smoothly encircles his wrist, and Carisi thinks about the scar he’ll never glimpse, unless Barba again lets him intrude on that twilight world of trial prep, all late nights, lukewarm coffee, and rolled shirtsleeves.

“Only thanks to your reflexes, it would seem.” 

“Hey, no. You wouldn’t have died from blood loss, even if he’d stuck you twice. No way.”

Suddenly, Carisi isn’t so quick on his feet as to say something less macabre. He’s mortified, but Barba doesn’t seem to mind.

“I would have given it my best shot.” 

Barba’s words are sharp, given to cut at the inflated vision of his presence Carisi carries around like a bright and shiny balloon. He drops off the bed, stands, but is uneasy on his feet. A combination of the blood loss, antibiotics (Barba doesn’t think three-hour-old water constitutes _standing water,_ but who is he to judge), and painkillers he’s on don’t seem to let him feel he’s actually touching the ground. He gently prods his arm, feeling nothing. 

“I should have reacted quicker.”

Barba sounds more remorseful than is necessary, considering Gardner was only known to him in the context of this case, which colored him violently, but not intimately. Carisi thinks Barba knows that, so when his voice softens to match, Barba isn’t startled by another voice in his head.

“And done what?”

Barba doesn’t reply for a time. His thoughts are as far from the courtroom as possible, and thrown backwards into time, besides. Carisi does him the favor of pretending he doesn't know that feeling or can't place that look. 

Barba’s voice catches up to him, though, and he looks at Carisi and gives as afiable a shrug as his injuries allow.

“Flipped the table.”

“Oh, that’d’ve been cool.”

“It _is_ cool.”

“When have you flipped a table?” 

Barba can’t mask his smug smile. “Brooklyn,” he says. It had been back when he was still fresh out of Harvard and sitting second chair, so the tale never quite attached itself to his name, but that of an elderly colleague who retired soon after. 

Back then, it was Barba who’d gotten a slap on the back, and a word of thanks for being quick on his feet. 

“Yeah, we don’t do that in Manhattan.” 

“No,” Barba agrees with a put-upon sigh, “We just get stabbed.” 

With his free hand, Barba smooths the gown down his front, and perhaps its a sleight of hand, but Barba comes away from the effort looking as prim and proper as if his stylish attire wasn’t shredded and lost to him. 

“Or, alternatively, execute a flawless flying tackle.”

“Usually one of the two,” Carisi agrees, and at the flat look Barba levels at him, Carisi insists, “I don’t make the rules.”

Despite Barba’s easy conversation, everything about him seems labored. Carisi doesn’t want to commit himself to this vision, but he fears what a lack of attentiveness could bring. 

Babra crosses the small room in three slow steps, arriving at a sectional sink crowded between top and bottom cabinets. His belongings are there, stuffed into a plastic bag and handed off from the ambulance. Barba starts going through the bag, inspecting his ruined suit jacket and shirts, unsure if there’s anything there to be salvaged for the walk out. It’s one thing that they’re bloody, but being cut apart and balled up just adds insult to literal injury. 

The bag is heavy, which makes Barba think he’s left his phone and keys in his jacket pocket. Slowly, it dawns on him that his clothes are bearing a different weight, one that has collected in the bottom left corner of the bag, wet and warm enough to surprise him.

It’s like feeling a pulse. 

Carisi, who has been watching the search and sees Barba come away twice as exhausted for it, hands him his phone. Barba decides that’s what he was looking for all along, nevermind his eagerness to get his hands off his soiled striped shirt and polka-dotted tie. 

Carisi gets the feeling Barba is more put out over his state of undress than anything else. He’s not vibrating with nervous energy like Carisi, or capitulating over _how_ this could happen, and _why_ him. He seems calm, and very nearly taken with the fact that a few stitches and some ointment will see him on his merry way. 

“Oh, hey, I got you this from downstairs.” 

From a plastic bag he’s carrying alongside Barba’s briefcase, Carisi produces an over-large sweatshirt. 

“Thought about making a mad dash to Neiman Marcus, but the hospital gift shop was a little more within my budget.”

Barba wrinkles his nose, then winces. The smattering of bandages on the right side of his face aren’t as forgiving as his lofty spirit. 

“I don’t shop at Neiman Marcus,” he says, haughtily because that’s what the sentiment deserves. 

Barba can nonetheless appreciate not leaving the hospital in slacks and an open-backed gown, the blue of which clashes with the pink of his socks, giving him the look of someone who came out the wrong end of a baby shower gone sideways. The sweatshirt, at least, is an inoffensive--if uninspired--grey. 

He reaches out to take it, his tacit acceptance being as close to a word of thanks Carisi is going to get, but Carisi pulls it back.

“Wait--” 

He tugs at the ribbed cuff on the right arm, rolling it back a few inches to expose the brushed fleece underneath, so that it doesn’t grate along Barba’s injury when it pulls it on. Barba frowns deliberately.

“You’re stretching it out.”

“What, you wanted to wear your Beth Israel Hospital sweater a second time?”

A soft, pleased expression opens over Barba’s face. It puts warmth back into cheeks drained of it, and there’s a moment, seeing this, that leaves Carisi weak with relief. What he saw--the ferocious attack, the bloody aftermath--hadn’t ended like those scenes normally do. Carisi himself wasn’t drawn to it later, well after the fact, when the body had cooled. He didn’t circle it, mindful of all the dried blood. 

For once, he was able to intervene. _For once,_ there was time. 

“I must be _very_ medicated because that was _very_ funny.”

And Carisi laughs at that, mostly out of shock.

He holds a beat, silently, patiently waiting for Barba to recognize the same relief he feels, and immerse himself into a vat of it, to expel a breath like he’d done _all that blood._

Carisi thinks this is the next step, the inevitable piece of human evolution Barba can’t deny. 

But Barba only continues to smile this softest smile, more tickled than bothered. 

A nurse shoulders her way into the room, bursting through a moment that’s already tripping the ends of reality. She sidesteps Carisi and indicates to Barba she means to outfit him with a sling. She sees the sweater and fulfills its expectation, helping to guide Barba’s arm to safe passage through the altered sleeve. She’s older, though her movements are smooth and assured. Barba doesn’t bother arguing with her about having no need for a sling, figuring if she’s going to help him dress, he ought not give her trouble over the accessories. 

Her efforts impede Carisi’s view. 

Carisi tells himself he’s looking for evidence that Barba’s injury isn’t as awful as it felt by his own hand, that there’s _actually_ a direct correlation between what happened, and how little Barba makes of it. He is answered, in a sense: Barba’s motions are more labored than his words. The softness palmed across his face repeats across his broad shoulders, where it patterns into exhaustion.

This isn’t a man startled, but a man resigned. 

The nurse starts giving Barba instructions about caring for his arm, considering the deep puncture and jagged edges caused by the glass. She tells him to be mindful of the stitches when he showers, and to be religious in completing the prescribed antibiotics. When Carisi realizes she’s speaking to the room at large, he feels caught, and ducks his head slightly, then takes half a step back. He all but puts his fingers in his ears in an effort to deny this information is for him to know.

It doesn’t matter that neither the nurse nor Barba so much as breathe in his direction; he feels his own presence like a cinder block tied to each extremity.

Maybe that’s why he doesn’t move when the nurse departs, and Barba soon after her. 

“You didn’t have to stay,” Barba tells him. The tenderness in his expression has shifted, turned over, as if seeking solitude on the other side of Barba’s face. “But since you did, I don’t suppose I could get a lift back to the courthouse?”

Carisi doesn’t laugh this time. He doesn’t read Barba’s earnestness for a joke, and that concerns him more than he’d like.

“Easy there, Counselor. Court’s dismissed.” 

“Over that?” Barba asks, already relegating this event to a far more distant past than the look of him allowed. “Under Judge Osborne?”

As they walk down the hall--Carisi going slowly because Barba is, though neither acknowledge that fact--Carisi explains that, while pinned by three officers and a bailiff, Gardner started mouthing off about how he could do to Barba what he’d done to the women he was charged with killing. 

That being, the final injustice of dismembering them.

“I suppose it’s just coincidence he went straight towards the bone saw?” Barba asks, unphased. “Goes to the working theory that they verbally confronted him, and the attacks escalated from there.”

“Yeah,” Carisi said, finding that talking to Barba about the showmanship of a case gave him a serious case of whiplash. “ _That,_ and some of the jury may have heard him.” 

Barba deflates at that, then starts texting deftly with his left hand, sending out word to Carmen in the hopes that she can pull the facts together so he can better understand the direction of their next battle--up- or downhill. 

It’s not the first time Carmen’s spearheaded the ground game for him, and she responds that she’s already on it. 

“And, Counselor, if you don’t mind me saying so--just you walking back into that courtroom would get us a guilty verdict.” 

Carisi puts in the effort to round the words into a compliment, but Barba rolls his eyes all the same. 

Though, Carisi may have a point.

“Buchanan can spin it right, ask for a mistrial. He’s not above saying my face is prejudicial.” 

Carmen’s next text reaches him as they enter the hospital’s parking garage, and it tells him much the same as Carisi. The judge will speak with the jury, and make a decision in the morning. She doesn’t want to see either Barba or Buchanan in the interim. Carmen continues, that goes double for Barba.

_[I will build the blockade to your office myself]_

“Looks like I won’t be needing your services,” Barba says, stopping short of Carisi’s car. 

“Do you think I drive a cable car?” Carisi asks, as if a trip to the courthouse is all he’s routed to do. “Please. Like I’m not going to drive you home.” 

It rolls off his tongue so easily, and strikes Barba so strangely, that Carisi makes himself nervous. To quell those fears, he reaches for his badge again, saying, “The Lieu will have my head if I don’t see you off, upright and breathing.” 

Whether he actually believes it or finds it easy to believe, Barba accepts that. 

He closes his eyes in the car--just to rest them, though Carisi keeps quiet enough that Barba could have drifted off to sleep. He doesn’t--can’t--when he catches onto the pattern of Carisi’s breathing. The way he holds it when they stop at a light, because Carisi all but turns full-bodied in his seat, just to stare at him. 

“Do me a favor?”

Barba asks this after Carisi’s followed his scant directions, and pulled up slowly ahead of Barba’s building.

Carisi’s eyes go wide, but narrow quickly, when he sees Barba has fished his wallet from his briefcase, and produced a crisp fifty.

“Accept this. For the sweater.”

“Sorry, Counselor,” Carisi says with a smile so sincere, Barba could gag. “No can do. You’ve met your limit for favors today.”

Barba grunts as he leverages himself out of the car. He feels dizzy for having sat as long as he did, and wishes he could sink back into the worn leather car seat, and let Carisi drive and breathe and and stare at him for the rest of the afternoon. He gets himself situated outside the car, but remembers his briefcase and immediately goes to reach for it with the arm strapped to his chest. 

The sound he makes in protest is practically spurned from his chest--exorcised, really. It’s a wonder a crew of teens with flashlights don’t accost him on the sidewalk, eager to speak to the demon _very clearly residing_ in his esophagus. 

Carisi scrambles out. 

“Let me help--”

“No,” Barba grabs his briefcase, and reorients himself to stand tall and assured, to be the picture of perfection despite every imbalance crowding the view. “I’ve just been informed you’re all out of favors for me.” 

It’s an hour later that Barba realizes he never properly thanked Carisi. It’s four hours after that before he swallows down his pride, a couple of aspirin, and convinces himself the novelty of his condition will keep until tomorrow.

-

At nine the following morning, court proves to be a perfunctory appearance, as Barba wins the trial handily. Carisi, who makes the trip as soon as he hears the trial is back on, arrives to find the place already cleared out.

He makes a second trip to 1 Hogan Place later that day, after a call from Carmen puts him in Barba’s office.

Seeing him again, Carisi doesn’t think he’ll ever dislodge the breath from his throat. Barba is immaculate in his suit, a three piece number for which he either afforded a great deal of time getting into that morning, or had help doing so. Carisi felt that lump in his throat harden either way.

The dark blue sling tracing over his chest is matched to his green-and-blue plaid tie, itself nestled perfectly between a white shirt and Barba’s choice of a grey suit. Carisi hangs back in the doorway a moment, just to stare, in case this vision of Barba so put together and whole escapes from him again. 

Most notably, for as lilting as his gaze was yesterday, it’s now twice as sharp. Barba is staring hard at the screen of his laptop, where every pixel is accounted for.

“Someone was filming.”

He says this conversationally, despite not looking at Carisi as he enters Barba’s office, practically at a gallop now that he’s been invited into a conversation. 

“In the courtroom? That’s illegal!”

“That’s… not of consequence right now.” 

Barba’s eyes flicker Carisi’s way, then back. Carisi isn’t cautious about rounding the desk and invading Barba’s space, and as soon as he’s behind Barba’s chair and to the right, he lays a hand flat on Barba’s desk for no other reason than to claim his place.

Barba lets the video play on a loop, and studies it like it’s a play gone wrong. He’s looking for where it is--precisely--that he allowed showmanship to surpass function. Where did he look up a second too late, where were his wits when he needed them? 

He’s been looking for hours. He still can’t find it. 

“I took that cheap piece of glassware like a champ. You took the partition like a hurdle and, I think… headed off a second blow.”

He pauses the video with a practiced (left) hand. The defendant still had the broken neck of the glass in his hand, and was readying to stick Barba with it, when Carisi tackled him. 

“I dunno,” Carisi hedges. He doesn’t like the implication, so he’s quick to paper over the possibility. “Could just be the angle.”

Carisi hardly looks at the video. Suffice to say, Barba notices.

Barba lets the video play again from the beginning. He doesn’t mind watching himself so much. The act against him is fevered with anger and hatred, it fuels the force and speed by which the glass decanter is broken over his raised arm, then buried deep into its flesh. 

It's watching Carisi that gets his stomach twisting with gaseous nausea. The budding filmographer is sat three rows behind Carisi and to the left, and when Gardner begins his slow descent from the box after Barba’s damning cross, Carisi’s blonde head is up, alert. He clocks Gardner for a threat, and is the first to make a move when Gardner looms over Barba, his presence changing fast from intimidating to purposeful. 

He rises from his seat just as Barba raises his arm to fend off the blow to his head--maybe a half a second before. The quality of the video does not allow for deeper analysis--this is just what Barba feels, watching it. 

They move in tandem, emerging as a united front. After the initial assault, however, only Carisi continues to move, and the whole room with him, as Barba stands stationary. 

In a room full of people who are content to watch one man cut down another, there is no denying that Carisi alone is swift and righteous intervention. And Barba _knows this._

He just wants to understand it better. 

“You didn’t pull your gun.”

“There wasn’t time for that.” 

Gardner was unarmed, and a defendant besides. Carisi wasn’t going to shoot him in open court, much less risk injuring a member or the jury, or Barba himself. But Gardner was big, the threat inherent, so of course Carisi had to intervene. 

“I’m quicker on my feet,” Carisi says, and gives a crooked smile, like he thinks he can throw Barba off balance with it. “Anyway.”

The smile falters just a second too soon, and Carisi’s play is given away in its entirety: not that he doesn't feel good about any of this--he doesn't--but that he’s thought to mask that fact. He’s uneasy about _being_ uneasy.

Barba doesn’t bother to stop the video; he lets it play soundlessly on as he swivels in his seat and sets his gaze firmly on Carisi. 

“You don’t seem alright with this,” he says, damning any preamble, forgoing any path that isn’t a straight line. “For the one who wasn’t impaled with a piece of the Ikea home collection.” 

Carisi opens and closes his mouth. It’s the least subtle means he has of suggesting he really, truly does not want to say.

Barba watches him with a dull stare; he literally cannot be bothered to dance around the issue, and _won’t._

“I know the threats have died down,” Carisi starts, a preamble of a kind, and least of what Barba is expecting. “I know you’re back to your baseline… usual bag of nuts…” He really doesn’t know how else to characterize the kinds of people who leave the messages that get through to Barba’s office by way of phone, letter, or questionable materials stuffed in wrinkled paper bags. “But it made me think, you know, that even out in the open, you’re vulnerable.”

“No more so than anyone else,” Barba reasons, calmly, as he realizes he’s trying to comfort this man, even for not wholly understanding his upset. 

Carisi gives a short shake of his head. _No,_ he seems to say. _That’s not good enough._

“You’re the only one I saw getting in Gardener’s face.”

“How many witnesses did you find for me? How many of his colleagues and neighbors did you speak to?”

Carisi scoffs. “Don’t go saying this was random. That’s worse. That is _so much worse._ ”

Barba thinks on it--the nature of violence, and how fault, coincidence, and proximity fit in to its plan.

“I disagree,” he says. 

As fiercely as Carisi wants to blow that entire notion to smithereens, to disavow Barba from its grip, he does not. Carisi only takes it, holds it, and tries to understand.

“It was scary,” Carisi says at last, an admission for something both explicit to and well beyond the attack. His rambling detour has returned him to Barba’s initial curiosity, and the man is still sat waiting for it. “But you don’t seem scared.”

“It hurt,” Barba allows. It still does. He can feel every hair drawn improperly under a stitch, can feel the tissue tug and tug and refuse to give even under the most mundane of movements. He can’t so much as take a deep breath, lest he disturb his arm’s recline across his chest.

He adds, though he knows Carisi does not want to hear it, “But I can’t say it frightened me.”

“That’s scary, too.” 

Carisi is soft-spoken, the words peeling out of him like flower petals before dawn, but he is no less sure of his sentiment. He even meets Barba’s widening gaze, and keeps well in its path. 

Because finally, the fear Barba’s been avoiding spreads its cold tendrils over his face, drawing his features into a shameful pinch. Except, it emerges far too late after the fact, and owes itself to an entirely different lineage. 

And it’s as though he’s been conscripted into battle against his one true opponent, the unknown motivations of his fellow man. 

He fears they’re becoming known, or worse--shared. 

Four hours ago, after the win was secured in his favor, and he’d heard one too many jokes about the assault being something he’d planned and hoped for, Barba was able to escape to his office, though he found little sanctuary there. The video emerged, a few local news outlets picking it up after it gained interest on social media. So Barba had time to watch and discern the event. He settled in, intending a brief hunt for his own hubris.

Instead, he began to feel something near concern for the attack, but only because he saw what it took of Carisi to head it off. In the abstract, Barba did not think it curious. Carisi was all of three feet behind him; it was only natural that he throw his whole self into the frey. But to see it? To know the efforts, not just the result?

It struck Barba dumb.

He spent the morning making decisions, making plans. And only at the last possible moment did he seek to confirm his suspicions by inviting Carisi to a screening, so to speak, to gage his response. 

_You helped me,_ is what he means to imply with the video. What about that fact should warrant such keen terror?

_Do you wish you could deny it?_

And finally--

_Why?_

Maybe with a second scotch in hand, an empty apartment spread out before him, or a an all-too-familiar bartop, Barba allows himself to answer that question in Carisi’s voice. He’s given a great many replies, some of them as crass as he wants, others as tender as he needs. 

Barba never lets himself linger on those notions; they are pathetic, not aching. If he longs, then he’s sinister for it. But Carisi is handsome and his open adoration is something of a thrill, even if he bears it for every lawyer whose name has graced an article or two. And given the way Carisi looks at him, sometimes, lighting up some dull swath of his existence with a smile or a joke, Barba isn’t always so sure his ideas are unfounded. 

Barba has his lips wrapped around the word-- _why?_ \--when he swallows it back. 

It’s that fear again, coming to him in waves for having missed him earlier. He thinks he’ll drown if he stays in his moment any longer, and he hasn’t got faculties enough to swim. 

Barba knows it’s not the arm, but his own cowardice that will sink him like a stone.

“I don’t--quite know what to say in a situation like this. ‘Thank you’ seems… like a start.” 

“Was that you, saying it?” Carisi shifts with the changing mood. He swings a little, from the shoulders down, as if to shake off the weight of their conversation. “Anytime, Counselor.”

“Let’s not make a habit of it,” Barba mutters, and turns back to the video, ever more thoughtful. “He could have taken a swing at you. From this angle.”

Carisi spares a performative glance. 

“Nah.”

“You have a physics degree I don’t know about?”

“Comes with experience,” Carisi says, presumably of the body’s range of motion when intending harm. He shrugs, adds, “It’s the job.”

“And _that_ doesn’t scare _you?”_

Barba is not initially interested in an honest answer. He just wants to see Carisi’s face twist itself up in annoyance, like he’s angry for being caught outside his own argument, but pleased that Barba is paying so close attention. 

Only, Carisi answers honestly, _earnestly,_ which is what well and truly does Barba in.

“Yeah, actually.” 

Unlike Barba, Carisi can gamely admit what frightens him. Victims, the ones they reach and the ones they don’t. The finality and desperation sink into bottle of beer, then creep at the corners of his bedroom ceiling at night. Murderers and criminals pointing guns at his head is a given. Being sat in a courtroom, knowing the truth but having to answer for getting it in a way that skirted a law or two, is a fear Carisi thinks he and Barba may even share. 

“But it’s why I get up every morning. It’s what I choose to do. The work, the people, it’s important to me. You’re important to me.” The realization hits like none of those bullets even did, and Carisi is sent spiraling down. “The _job,_ I mean. The job is important. Not… uh.” 

He shoves his hands in his pockets, as if they were the ones doing all the talking, and not just floundering about as a sideshow. Barba does him no favors whatsoever, choosing instead to stare blankly at the man as he struggles to regain his composure. 

“How’s the arm?”

“Not septic.” 

“And you’re feeling okay?”

“I have my usual zest for life.” 

Carisi wets his lips. “The conversation ended, like, thirty seconds ago, didn’t it?”

Finally, Barba takes pity on Carisi and this untenable scenario. He trades his blank stare for a wry little twist of a smirk, saying, “About the time you made note of how unimportant I am, yes. Thirty-two, thirty-three, thirty-four…”

“Alright, alright.” Carisi looks relieved for the return to form, though he’s already hastening his own departure, rather than making himself comfortable near Barba’s coffee cady, which is where he likes to stand to make it appear as though he has a good reason for sticking around like he does. He’s by the door when he ducks slightly, hiding a shy smile. 

“Take it easy, Counselor,” he says, leaving, and thinking he’s gotten away with anything.

Barba reminds himself of his plans and his decisions. He takes them all silently in the limp hand of his decommissioned arm, and makes a fist.

-

 _[Are you busy? Update in Gardner case.]_

Carisi receives the text while at lunch with his sister Gina, with a second bearing an address in midtown arriving just as Carisi fishes a couple bills out of his wallet. He offers his apologies and shouts down an idling taxi in the same breath.

It’s a needless endeavor; the address isn’t so far that Carisi couldn’t have walked, and had time to run a few mental scenarios while putting in the legwork. 

Nothing of what he could have imagined, however, is what he finds: Barba, at a tailor’s, sat deep in a leather chair, dark jeans and chelsea boots so sharp a shade of brown, in the right light they gleamed mahogany red. 

Barba has a compulsion for what is beautiful in the world, and surrounding himself with it in the most literal sense. He wraps himself in bespoke suits, but can’t commit to the idle lifestyle. The coffee he’s drinking, held in a cheap paper cup and bought from any one of a hundred bodegas, speaks to his scattered affiliations. 

Not to mention, the sweater he was wearing.

In blue thread, _Beth Israel Hospital_ was stitched in miniature lettering on the breast, mostly obscured by the sling, but no stranger to the man that bought it. 

Carisi isn't sure he gets the joke, but a soft smile awakens from his features all the same. 

“A second time, huh?”

“What, this old thing?” 

Carisi’s offered a fashionable little espresso, but forgoes it, as if he needs his hands free to fully understand why Barba has brought him here on a Saturday afternoon. He thinks there must be reason enough for him to grasp it tangibly, because already, Carisi is striking things from the list. 

Barba did not ask him here out of convenience; he is not in a way to buy something for himself--a replacement for the suit he’d lost. His arm is still tender, still red and lost to the angry, ugly throes of healing. Carisi can’t believe he’s too keen on moving it around if he doesn’t have to. 

This little venture, Carisi fears, is just for him, and his hundred-dollar suit ruined by association. 

“It’s exactly what you think,” Barba says, sounding relaxed. 

Carisi looks bereft. He even throws a glance to the door, thinking he can make a break for it before Barba does something foolish.

“I can’t afford anything in here,” Carisi hisses. He’s sure someone has heard him, and the conspiracy is blown. 

Barba doesn’t bother lowering his voice to match Carisi’s. He lets it sing. 

“It’s taken care of.”

“Counselor, you don’t owe me anything.” 

“It’s off the rack, anyway.”

“Off _these_ racks, though. Gilded racks.”

“Saheer’s already pulled a few. Go.” 

There’s a rush of activity--a polite hand extended to him, the swing of a curtain, and the benefit of the doubt sailing clear out the storefront window. 

When Carisi steps out--nervous, despite never feeling more better in a three-piece suit--Barba is focused on his phone. Carisi is relieved, and listens as Saheer, a slim man with a warm disposition and deep-set brown eyes, explains the fit.

Barba pipes up, “It’s awfully blue.”

Carisi has more than caught his attention: Barba’s coffee is set aside, his phone is face-down on a decorative side table. His chin is raised and he looks thoughtful, almost curious, at the display. 

There’s a expectancy in his stare, and Carisi feels the strange urge to succeed in this. In the third suit he lets hug his shoulders and button neatly at his middle, Carisi finds an excellent look and fit, the color rich and dark, and detailing enough to catch the eye and turn heads. 

“A shirt and tie, too,” Barba says, sounding already very pleased with himself. 

“My shirt and tie were fine,” Carisi says--a lie, but because they were a dark blue and black respectively, the bloodstains were hardly noticeable. He hadn’t worn them again, but they’d gone in the wash and back in his closet all the same. 

“Were they, though?” 

Barba distinctly remembers them being a touch shiny and poorly chosen for Carisi’s coloring.

“How about these?” Carisi asks, palming at a green shirt and brown tie. One’s on a rack and the other’s laid neatly in a rainbow of others on a table, and they are diametrically opposed for those reasons and then some. 

“Are you running black ops in El Salvador? No.” 

They deliberate, with Barba making a seasoned case and Carisi giving him a good fight for it. Saheer has the final word, and that it coincides with Barba’s is pure serendipity. 

Carisi shakes his head, knowing he’s been bested. But his good spirits only take him so far, and the reality of the situation returns to him as Saheer takes the selections and encloses them in a camel-colored garment bag. 

“Wait.”

“Oh, don’t be a tease.”

“Barba, seriously. I can’t let you do this.” Carisi doesn’t say what he wants to--that he doesn’t need a reward, that he isn’t owed anything for being in the right place at the right time, that Barba’s thanks was more than enough. 

The truth doesn’t come as easily as an excuse, however, which is the road Carisi takes: “It’s a grand and then some, that’s, like, rent--”

“You can hardly put a price on a life, now can you?” Barba tuts. “Especially not such a low one. I should be offended.”

He doesn’t fiddle with his wallet, doesn’t produce a mat black credit card with his name embossed in gold. He only smiles and thanks Saheer for his time, and finally settles on Carisi with a strange look in his eye. 

“You’re going to make me, the newly christened gimp, carry your bag?”

Carisi accepts his spoils under the guise for being helpful. Barba thinks that's as impressive of a long game as he's ever seen. 

They leave the shop and pound the sidewalk for a few steps, Carisi following Barba’s lead. The sun is already sinking, shirking its responsibilities for the forthcoming winter months.

“I don’t think I’ll even get married in something this nice,” he says, his excitement having taken a turn towards awe. Barba feels much has happened to him in the reverse. He's quietly thrilled for what is to come. 

Carisi adds, still as brightly, “I guess I could be buried in it.”

“There’s a happy thought,” Barba says with a smirk, and stops at a street crossing. He is, effectively, allowing Carisi to walk him home. A cyclist speeds by, hedging his bets with a car and more than a few pedestrians. Barba feels the man’s wind, smells his laundry detergent, and is not afraid for the proximity. He turns his head slightly to the man ever on his right.

“You could wear it to dinner.”

“Oh my god, and eat in this? I don’t think I’ll _breathe_ in this.”

Barba smiles. The light turns, and people around them who haven’t already made a mad dash are shuffling forward. Barba doesn’t move. 

“I’m just… going to wait.” 

“Oh.”

“So?”

“Dinner,” Carisi repeats, just to be sure. Saying it back makes him a touch scandalized, as though it was his suggestion all along. 

“Just a thought.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I’d like to.” 

Carisi looks dumbly at the garment bag, plumbing the depths of his psyche for what he has or hasn't said that should culminate in this gift, and this offer. Did he seem ungrateful for the suit? Or--and Carisi feels a flop sweat unfold over his brow--was he so obviously wanting of everything else? 

“If you're thinking grand gestures, I think you’ve got me beat, getting between me and a convicted killer.”

“Alleged,” Carisi says, “At the time.” It’s as if he had any doubt the conviction wouldn't come with Barba manning the helm, and they both smile a little appreciating the joke. 

Barba wants to answer for all the unease clouding their eyes when the other gets close. _I like you,_ he wants to say. It’s wrapped up a whole lot of other complicated shit, but it’s there, as something sure enough to feel, and deep enough to excuse not speaking for. 

_But I think I’m starting to regret my silence._

Barba plans to say all this--he’ll take the flying leap, this time--but between glasses of wine, not street corners. 

“I might get the wrong idea,” Carisi says, his breath escaping him like the rush of air behind a cyclist.

A new crowd gathers. The light changes. Barba takes that first step. 

“Will you?”

-

They wait a week, time enough to be cowards or prove they are anything but.

Carisi’s suit is ever more a gift in the restaurant’s pleasantly warm lighting, the kind curated by a team of scientists to set cheeks ago and throw stars into eyes. 

Dinner feels like a distant memory by the time Carisi returns them to Barba’s apartment, this time getting further than the patch of sidewalk outside. Carisi follows Barba into drinks and conversation, and into spaces warm and welcoming. 

He gives up a kiss and steals two more for good measure. 

There is a silent understanding that there will time for games, for running roughshod, for showing off. Tonight is an indulgence. 

Such is how it comes to be that between touches both exploratory and increasingly familiar, they scarcely do more than undress. 

Barba is a slow participant out of necessity, and for that insists much the same of Carisi. 

Carisi unbuttons his shirt, the pale blue bought under Barba’s elegant eye. While Barba struggles to hasten his own undress, Carisi starts to fold his shirt while swinging his hips gently to nonexistent music. He does it to stall for time, but delights in it because Barba startles into a smile for his antics.

“Let me help,” Carisi says, already cradling the arm he once held with a life-affirming vice. 

It’s one of Barba’s decisions that he not argue the point, this time.

Later, Carisi will remember that first night like folded paper. 

With another kiss, this one in tender appreciation, Carisi’s whole world expands, with Barba at its center.


End file.
